Chichester's Coram Boy - “no apology about being so vast and so epic” - video Dailymotion

SussexWorld

Director Anna Ledwich comes full circle as she returns to Chichester Festival Theatre to direct Coram Boy on the main-house stage.

Transcript

00:00 Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Nansal Six Newspapers. Lovely

00:06 to speak again to Ellen Ledwich. Now you're back at Justice for the Theatre. We've had

00:11 the savagery of the Tudors, we've got the chat savagery now of a slightly different

00:15 era. You are directing The Coram Boy on the main house stage, the second main house production

00:20 in the summer season. What's it all about then? What have we got in store with this?

00:25 It sounds huge.

00:27 It is huge. It's a wonderful, I guess, epic tale, which covers a number of years in the

00:35 mid 18th century. And it incorporates choir boys at Gloucester Cathedral, the wealthy

00:43 gentry of the Gloucester countryside, villainy of the London underclass, intersecting all

00:52 in wondrous coincidences and, I guess, moments of lives passing by each other. And the play

01:00 itself, I mean, to try and talk about the plot is, I fail at it every time, which probably

01:05 isn't a reassuring sign from the director. But what the play contains is wonderful ideas

01:14 of as human beings and as a culture, many contrasting things coexist and the tension

01:22 between those two things, whether it be extreme wealth being built in the extreme poverty,

01:28 the sense of heavenly music sitting alongside desperate acts of villainy. And so what's

01:35 really delicious, I think, about the play is that it sucks you into this world and you're

01:40 taken on this journey following a number of different characters and which there is real

01:49 emotional highs and lows. It's a sense of a real roller coaster of a ride with moments

01:56 of fantasy and moments of gritty reality, all dovetailing with the work of Handel, which

02:04 is written into the play. The creation of the Messiah is essentially happening alongside

02:09 the action of the play. So we have live singing, live music. And so it's a really wonderful

02:15 piece to have in the festival theatre, I think.

02:18 Absolutely. And a really wonderful piece for you personally, given that it was in Chichester

02:22 that you trained as a director. How do you look back on that training?

02:26 Oh, I had a wonderful time at Chichester. I was in Chichester for two years under Jonathan

02:32 Church. And in that time, I got to assist on productions both in the festival space

02:37 and the Minerva. I feel I know those theatres really, really well. And there's something

02:42 very special about, I think, the relationship between the audience and the stage. And certainly

02:49 plays I think that, especially in the festival space, invite the audience into their world.

02:55 This is one of those plays, I think, that will really just flourish within that particular

03:01 setting.

03:02 That sounds great. But when you look back, can you think in terms of ways that Chichester

03:06 shaped you as a director, things that you gained here that perhaps you wouldn't had

03:10 you trained somewhere else?

03:11 That's a really tricky question. No, I mean, who knows? I mean, I think what I personally,

03:19 through the various different productions that I assisted on, it was an understanding

03:23 of working on a certain scale, with a certain profile of performer as well, with a certain

03:30 level of director, and watching certain directors that, you know, have a way of working that

03:39 at times can be uncompromising, or at times can be deeply compromising. It's a really

03:44 interesting experience to sit in someone else's room and observe how they navigate the creative

03:48 process, and then how always that creative process is having to butt up against the reality

03:52 of putting a space within a certain amount of time. So I was very lucky to work with

03:57 very, very high quality people. I mean, I think that's the real hallmark of Chichester.

04:01 It's gold standard for sure.

04:03 And now you've come full circle.

04:05 Yeah, it's a real gift to be back. I'm really looking forward to it.

04:11 Well, congratulations. Lovely to speak to you again after 12 years.

04:14 Yeah, thank you.

04:15 Everything goes brilliant. Thanks for your time.

04:17 Thank you.

04:18 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Chichester's Coram Boy - “no apology about being so vast and so epic”

Category

Transcript

Recommended